Environmental policy and equity: The case of superfund

Contents:

This article analyzes the equity implications of the EPA's Superfund program by examining the geographic distribution of sites, who pays for cleanup, and cleanup pace. Although the “polluter pays” principle is used to justify Superfund policy, it is a goal that is not-and indeed usually cannot-be attained for past contamination. Further, the geographic distribution of Superfund sites suggests that the likely beneficiaries of program expenditures live in counties that are on average both wealthier and more highly educated than the rest, and also have lower rates of poverty. The pace of the EPA's cleanups, however, depends mostly on the sites' potential hazard, and is not apparently motivated by the localities' socioeconomic characteristics or political representation. The program is found in several respects to be both inefficient and inequitable, yet Superfund enjoys considerable support for reasons beyond these traditional public policy goals, including its political and symbolic appeal.

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.